TOWARD THE DISTANCE Chapter 19

Cade signed up for the show himself — called the production company, leveraged his name and his money, and bought his way onto the next episode as a featured guest. The producers, sensing the explosive potential of the story, cranked up the marketing machine. Within days, the episode was trending before it even aired.

Cade didn't try to clean himself up for the cameras. Not really. He showered. He shaved. He put on a tie — the first one Elena had ever bought him, years ago, back when they were still young and still believed in forever. But beyond that, he let the cameras see exactly what he looked like: a man who had not slept properly in weeks, who had barely eaten, who was held together by nothing but guilt and stubbornness.

The host opened with gentle questions. Cade answered them all with brutal honesty.

"I came here to apologize to my wife," he said, looking directly into the camera. "I want her to hear this. Wherever she is."

He told the truth — all of it. The affair. The lies. The way he had treated Elena's trust like it was something disposable. The way he had watched her slowly disappear and done nothing to stop it.

"Every word I ever said to her about loving only her — I said those things, and I meant them, and I broke every single one of them." His voice faltered. He pressed his lips together, steadied himself, and kept going. "I'm not here to make excuses. There aren't any. I just want one chance to tell her I know what I did. And I'm sorry."

The segment aired on a Tuesday night. By Wednesday morning, it had been viewed forty million times. Comment sections exploded. Opinion pieces were written. Social media threads dissected every word, every micro-expression, every crack in Cade's composure.

And still — nothing from Elena.

Cade waited. He kept his phone on at all hours, the volume turned to maximum. He checked it every few minutes, compulsively, the way someone checks a wound to see if it's still bleeding.

No calls. No messages. No sign that she had seen the video at all.

After a week of silence, Cade called his assistant.

"Put the video on the company website. The main page. Leave it up indefinitely — until we hear something from Elena."

The assistant hesitated. "Cade… that would essentially turn the company's homepage into a public apology. The board —"

"I don't care about the board. Do it."

"And… social media? Ad placements?"

"Everything. Buy every ad slot you can find. Domestic and international. Front page. Top placement. And put my personal phone number on all of it. Anyone with information about Elena's whereabouts can contact me directly."

The campaign launched within days. Cade Harrington's face — haunted, raw, unmistakably broken — appeared on billboards, streaming platforms, social media feeds, news aggregators. Underneath every image, the same message:

AN NING — IF YOU SEE THIS, PLEASE CALL ME.

And below that: a phone number. His private line. The one he never turned off.

The calls started coming almost immediately.

"Is the reward real? The one on the missing persons notice?"

"Of course it is."

"I saw her yesterday. At a café downtown —"

"Where? Which café? Tell me everything —"

Cade wired the money before he even hung up. Ten thousand dollars, transferred in seconds, for an address that turned out to be completely fabricated.

It happened again. And again. And again.

Every caller swore they'd seen Elena. Every single one turned out to be a lie — a stranger looking for easy money, drawn by the reward and the publicity. Cade paid them all anyway. Every time, without hesitation, because each call was a thread he couldn't afford not to pull.

Some of the callers were women — not looking for information, but offering something else entirely.

"Mr. Harrington, I have friends who could keep you company —"

"Get out."

The offers stopped after that. So did most of the calls. And Cade was left with nothing but silence and an open phone line that no one called.